There will be hardly any techie who hasn’t heard of SQLite DB. Pretty much every smartphone user unknowingly uses it. I am big fan of Sqlite. Recently they formulated a code of conduct for the contributors and developers for Sqlite codebase. The SQLite code of conduct is an unchanged extract of “instruments of good works” from chapter 4 of The Rule of St. Benedict.

The contributors to SQLite and the user’s of their developer forum will be believers, non-believers, believers from other faith’s. There are certain parts of the rule’s that might not go down well with the community. All of the current core developers of SQLite have pledged to follow this rule. SQLite adds, in the future, should someone wish to become a core developer of SQLite and is in every way qualified except that he or she does not feel comfortable with some details of this rule, then appropriate adjustments will be made at that point.

What one can make of the above statements is.

• Either all SQLite Contributors are followers of christianity or they are magnanimous to accept the code of conduct and avoid confrontation.
• A wannabe core developer now has to make a very hard choice from a intellectual and ethical perspective

I am more interested in knowing how folks at SQLite have come to a conclusion on using this particular code of conduct, what other alternatives they discarded. What were the guiding principles in this endeavor.

There are quite a number of code of conduct’s out there which are used by the developer communities the world over and more or less all of them have the same underpinnings. The contributor covenant is a good example of a code of conduct that is clear, unambiguous, non-preachy, and reasonably well formulated to allow for decent discussion and professional conduct.